As part of a collaboration between the High Commission of Canada and Progresif, a film screening was held at Progresif Cellulars’s Headquarters on March 3. As part of an audience watching the film for the first time, one is struck by Selvi’s unapologetic persistence in crafting her own path via her own means, as well as her refusal to let her terrible past deter her from giving out second chances. Paloschi, who was also in attendance during the screening, spoke highly of Selvi’s effortless charm regardless of her situation, as well as her eagerness to prove herself, which the director aimed to capture during the ten years of shooting.

The tiniest film on our list, this modest but unforgettable documentary
tells the simple tale of an unflappable Indian girl ... There’s something in Selvi’s journey from
the darkest trauma to glorious self-actualisation that feels powerfully
relevant to our times.

That twist would be
enough to delight even the most jaded documentary aficionado, but
Paloschi’s tight direction and crisp pace further elevate the film,
turning what most would assume to be a sob story into a triumphant
chronicle that never slips into sentimentality.

Driving With Selvi: A terrific Canadian doc that tells the wrenching but inspirational story of South India’s first female taxi driver, Driving With Selvi
has travelled far and wide since it served as a very moving
opening-night selection for the Reel Asian festival last year.

It’s taken almost a year for Driving With Selvi to get a theatrical
release in Toronto after opening the 2015 Reel Asian film festival. But
now, Elisa Paloschi’s inspirational documentary is back, and you should
see it.

Selvi is a young Indian woman who fled an abusive marriage to
reinvent herself as the first female taxi driver in the city of
Karnataka – a hard-won achievement that opened doors to further
opportunities.

Over a decade later, her escape and journey to becoming one of India's
first female taxi drivers are the subject of a documentary film, "Driving With Selvi", that aims to inspire women to break out of traditional roles, its director said.

One can’t help wondering how the presence of film-makers in
Selvi’s life since her teens has shaped her, but clearly she’s repaid
Paloschi for the spotlight by growing into a deeply likable, engaging
screen presence. One can help wondering what darker details might have
been left out of the final edit, but it’s an effective bit of
awareness-raising.

Through sensitive but probing interviews and footage of
Selvi’s day-to-day life, Canadian director Elisa Paloschi makes us feel
privileged to share the experiences of this courageous, principled and
utterly charismatic young woman.

"A child bride... is the unlikely star of an inspiring film in this month's Doc Edge Film Festival....You only need to see Selvi to understand the fascination. Belying an
early life of appalling disadvantage and cruelty, her smile is dazzling
enough to light up a small town; self-effacing and unassuming, she's a
tiny tomboy equally at home slinging a Tata down rutted streets or
driving a truck along dusty highways."

"I recommend even more strongly Driving with Selvi, Elisa Paloschi’s
10-years-in-the-making tale of a South Indian woman who escaped her
awful (and common) fate as a child bride in an arranged marriage,
finding fulfillment as one of her country’s few female taxi drivers.

It’s the sort of movie that makes you cringe once you understand the
suffering its real-life heroine endured, and feel absolutely elevated by
her self-fulfillment."

"After
watching hundreds of films... Ms. Dreyer championed Driving
with Selvi, a documentary about South India’s first female cab driver....Ms.
Dreyer said she had already had an interest in the Southern Indian
region.
“I felt very connected with the character [Selvi], she’s inspiring,” she
said. “It’s stories like this that deserve to be told.”

From the all female programming team “... Atlanta Film Festival is presenting, among others, Driving with Selvi
(Elisa Paloschi) a documentary about the first woman taxi driver in
South India. ...it’s about continuing to push for diverse stories on
both sides of the camera.”

"Several weeks ago, I was delighted and honored to participate on a panel following the screening of the remarkable film, Driving with Selvi, organized by The United Nations Association of Denver....Many beautiful and powerful RIPPLES have emerged to share. May they inspire and ignite you this day..."

"Ten years later, she has a film that is gathering praise and picking up
invitations to festivals all around the world including to the Wakefield
International Film Festival where Driving with Selvi will be screened
on Feb. 28."

"Paloschi
shadowed her endearing can-do subject for a decade, which gives this
inspirational film considerable scope. While Selvi’s past was so ugly
she once contemplated suicide, with her self-liberation taking a
heartbreaking toll on her own family relations, this is ultimately a
story of hope. This young mother and human-rights activist with a
winning smile is a wonderful role model, living proof it’s never too
late to overcome adversity and achieve happiness on your own terms."

Driving With Selvi isn’t like most documentaries that just
throw information at you in a too-organized way. The film unravels like a
good narrative, allowing the story to go where it will while still
managing to keep the audience entertained and engrossed. It’s not only
that Selvi is such an amazing woman (I fully wanted to become best
friends with her while watching this movie) who is perpetually looking
for what she can do next in order to survive and be happy, but also
because Paloschi doesn’t force the story out.

But Driving With Selvi, as a film, isn't about investigating the
issues. Instead, it's a personal story — a gentle portrait of Selvi's
life over the last 10 years, one that breathes along with her in its
pacing, as the doc's Toronto-based director Elisa Paloschi — who's also the cinematographer — beautifully captures the vibrancy, and the poverty, of her subject's surroundings.

In a genre known for utilizing heavy-handed storytelling to get agendas across, Driving with Selvi
works because of its subtlety. Paloschi never uses the film as a
platform to preach, instead she chooses to observe Selvi’s slow march
toward happiness and let the circumstances surrounding her do the
talking.

“I wasn’t expecting to make a feature film at all, but over the next
couple years I went back over and over again, and each time there was
something interesting happening in Selvi’s life,” Paloschi, who is also a
photographer, tells realscreen. “It took a few years of filming her before I even knew that there was a film.”

The Toronto-based director traveled frequently to India after her
initial trip in 2004, often returning to see Selvi. Once she committed
to the idea of making a doc, she figured she would focus on the taxi
company Selvi hoped to form with other women, but when those plans fell
through, the film became about Selvi’s personal journey into marriage
and motherhood, her professional achievements – learning to drive a
passenger bus and challenging cultural norms around driving, to name a
few – and later coming to terms with the tragic events of her past.

"Director/producer Paloschi – whose Jane Bunnett study, Embracing Voices,
established her as a sensitive and clear-eyed filmmaker – first met
Selvi in 2004, and the decade-long friendship between the two is
apparent in Selvi’s comfort in front of the camera and her frankness in
discussing the ugly past she’s left behind."

In advance of Toronto’s ReelAsian film festival. the reporter speaks with Elisa in studio about
visiting India as a tourist, how she first met Selvi, 10 years of
shooting the film, making a film in a developing nation, why Indian
women in smaller cities rarely drive, Selvi’s motivation, human
trafficking, child brides, poverty, feminism, women as second-class
citizens, dowries, divorce, motivation, how to share her story …and
more!.

'That gentle, unobtrusive style allows Selvi to take centre stage, making for a slight (the runtime is just 70 minutes) yet inspiring piece of cinema: at the end of it all, she remains admirably in forward gear, planning to move from taxis to trucks. After sitting in her back-seat for an hour, you believe she can do it."

"The misogynist patriarchy in India (and, shamefully, much of the world) is the backdrop to Driving with Selvi but it is the voice of women that are in the foreground.It is hard not to feel intense anger and disgust at parts of her story, but the important part is that she is telling it – and with an intelligence and bravery that inspires a degree of hope."

"In front of Paloschi’s lense, Selvi undergoes the metamorphosis from a
victim of poverty and child abuse to empowerment and success. She was a
victim of her circumstances, but Selvi managed to overcome and carved a
unique path for herself rather than letting her fate be determined by
the reality she was exposed to. “It’s really about her own agency,”
Paloschi told me. Selvi is at the steering wheel of personal growth and
change for women in India. Driving with Selvi gives the world a back seat view to her journey."